The Stuff of Life to Knit You
by Ashura
Summary: "They're /my/ fantasies," she said. "Why shouldn't I indulge them? I'm fifty years old, and by this point if I want to spend my life in a fairy tale, I think I've earned it....but it's been so long, and I do not know if I can still find the way."
1. prologue

The Stuff of Life to Knit You 

by Ashura

**disclaimer:** Middle-earth and all its residents belong to the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I would never dream of claiming them.  Maybe one shouldn't fanfic LotR, someting's got to be sacred but on the other hand, this is almost like going back to my roots...how many notebooks full of middle-earth scribblings did I fill up as a kid...?

**dedication:** to everyone who, like me, grew up battling orcs in their backyard and building Lothlorien in a treehouse.

_Prologue:_

"See, Aragorn is kind of like Jesus," a young brunette woman was explaining, her voice warm with passion for her subject.  "He's the heir of the Great King, and he's supposed to be a healer, prophesied to save the world from dark days."

"Ha.  If anybody's like Jesus in this story it's Frodo," came a low male voice from the back corner of the classroom.  "He's the one who ends up sacrificing everything to save the world—he doesn't get killed, but he does give his life, if you think about it.  He was never the same after."

"But he's not...well, /great/," the first responded, stammering.  "I mean, he does great things, but he's really just a hobbit thrust into a bad situation."

"Sounds like he fits the bill even more, to me," the young man said, a note in his voice of satisfied finality.

"Professor Walden!"  the girl called, starting to sound desperate.  "What do you think?"

"I think that's as far as we need to take that topic today."  Walden was small, slender, dignified in the way that only literature professors can ever really pull off, and even then only after they reach middle-age, with wise green eyes and short red hair that was beginning at last to show streaks of silver.  "But you're both welcome to explore it as much as you like in the freewrites that are due on Thursday.  Four pages—and that's at the beginning of class, not slipped under my door at sunset with an apology and a cookie," she added, with a pointed look to the boy in the back corner.  

She slipped out the door while her students were still gathering their things—they were used to it, every class she'd had for years had been used to it.  Walden's Disappearing Act, they called it, and especially during the Tolkien unit, made a good many jokes about her possible possession of a golden ring of invisibility.  

It had taken a long time for her to really become comfortable with the jokes, but then, she knew things that they didn't, and some of it was not necessarily about the metaphysical poets or the adventures of Beowulf.

Up the stairs—the elevator was slow, when it bothered to work at all—and down the hall, past the writing centre and the administrators' offices, into the Catacombs she went.  They weren't really catacombs, especially as they were on the third floor, but a university English department can warp one's brain as well as one's sense of humour, and it had been so named for as long as she could remember.  The walls were a chaotic mix of utility and whimsy—playbills for shows from London that nobody in the department was old enough to have actually seen, clippings from newspapers and scatterings of poetry or old cartoons hung between advisor sign-up sheets and class schedules.

Her office was 12-B, and she had lived there now for a very long time.  Not /lived/ there in the sense that she slept or ate there, but rather than she poured her heart into it until it became her home.  Her interest in all things Tolkien was obvious even before entering:  the word "coarya" in Elvish script as one went in the door, and "lerya" on the other side as one came out.  [1]  A large map of Middle-Earth dominated one wall, though the edges were curling with age.  She was an artist as well, and her work was everywhere—members of the Fellowship, singly or together, and not infrequently her own self, though much younger, was shown with them.  She had been, apparently, a pretty girl, fresh-faced but sad-eyed, long red hair either hanging loose or knotted into a haphazard tail at the nape of her neck.

"Amber?"  The voice was accompanied by a quick, polite knock on the open door, and she turned.  "I know you just got out of class, so you probably haven't gotten the message yet.  The meeting's been cancelled, Roger slipped on the stairs.  Looks like he broke an ankle."

"That's too bad.  About his leg, I mean, not the meeting."  She smiled.  Charles Norland, whose specialty was Shakespeare, was a stout old man who still wore his hair long and waving wildly about his head.  They had been friends for a long time.  

There were still points of contention between them, and they seemed most prominent whenever he was in her office.  She watched his gaze flicker around the room, resting on each of her paintings, as he always did.  "Amber...when are you going to take those down?"

Her lips thinned, frowned.  "I'm not going to take them down, Charles, we've been over this.  I don't tell you how to decourate your office."

He pushed his dark-rimmed wire glasses further up on his nose.  "No, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of artistic license, but students see this stuff.   You'll have them thinking it's perfectly all right to wander around in fantasyland for their whole lives."

She raised her eyebrows, not quite able to suppress the chuckle that seemed determined to escape.  "They're /English/ majors, Charles.  They've already got that much figured out."

He didn't seem to think it was all that funny.  "It's all fantasy," he said again.

Amber Walden let out a long, slow breath.  "Of course it is," she replied.  "And they are /my/ fantasies.  Why shouldn't I indulge them?  I'm fifty years old, and by this point I think if I want to spend my life in a fairy tale that I've earned it.  Don't you?"

He shook his head, grumbling, but the good-natured grumbling of an old friend who knows he's already lost the argument.  "Suit yourself.  I'm off home.  Don't run afoul of any goblins on your way out."  

He closed the door behind him, and Amber sank wearily into her chair.  Her head fell back—her posture would have earned a severe lecture from her mother, had she been younger—and stared up at the map, and the paintings, for a long and quiet while.  She was tired.  Absently she twisted a ring on her hand, an elabourate twist of tarnished white gold that she wore like a wedding band, though it wasn't.  

"Is it time yet?" she asked the painted faces softly.  "I'm getting old, and so tired.  I know twenty-five years is barely a heartbeat in the lives of Elves and Dúnadain, but it is half my life gone by now."

The flat canvas faces made no answer, though her mind provided her with one.  //_Not yet, not yet_// echoed in her head, whether it was a voice from the air or only a product of her mind.  

"Soon, though," she said with a sigh.  "For my heart followed you long ago, and soon, whatever the time, I will have no choice but to go after it."

She stood and gathered her things, and shrugged into her coat, and turned off the lights as she slipped out the door.  

"I only hope," she whispered as she closed it behind her, "that I can still find the way."

***

[1] "coarya" = Quenya (Elvish), 'her house.'  "Lerya" = Quenya, 'to be set free'


	2. I. i. Sunset

The Stuff of Life to Knit You 

by Ashura

disclaimer: not mine, and I border on blasphemy by writing this in the first place.  Lyrics at the beginning are from the Rankin-Bass animated film of _The Hobbit_.

pairings: none

archive:  at the moment only ff.net

Book I 

_The greatest adventure is what lies ahead_

_today and tomorrow are yet to be sent_

_the chances, the changes are all yours to make_

_the mold of your life is in your hands to break_

_The greatest adventure is there if you're bold_

_let go of the moment that life makes you hold_

_to measure the meaning can make you delay_

_it's time you stopped thinking, and wasting the day_

_The man who's a dreamer and never takes leave_

_who think of a world that is just make-believe_

_will never know passion, will never know pain_

_who sits by the window will one day see rain_

_The greatest adventure is what lies ahead...._

chapter 1:  sunset

**Twenty-six years previous:**

It was a good day for wearing black and writing poetry—a grey, dismal sort of day, when the clouds were hung over with too much drink but couldn't seem to quite manage to be rid of it, and the damp ground squelched underfoot.  Amber had decided this was sufficient reason to skip an already late dinner in favour of a walk, and spend the evening in more creative pursuits. 

There was a lake on campus, surrounded by deciduous woodlands and thigh-deep ferns that always grew back no matter how many ambitious students made the attempt to carve paths through them.  It was a magical sort of place, but not in any sense a pleasant one—the ruins it housed, in a clearing on the side of a hill out of sight of any buildings, spoke more with the whispers of poltergeists than the laughter of elves.

It years long past it had been an asylum, and the pain and terror of its former inhabitants had so thoroughly soaked into the surroundings that the air and ground would never be rid of it.  The bulk of the buildings had been long since demolished, but a scattered collection of walls and floors and stairways remained standing, crumbling and ancient as tombstones.

It was at the top of one of these staircases, leaning against the remains of a broken wall, that Amber rested now, indulging in Gothic fantasies and angst-ridden snippets of poetry, and the fact that in the middle of a depressing wet evening, no-one else was around.  The ruins in the day were atmospheric, if frightening, but their potent malignancy thickened as the sky dwindled into twilight.  Much later, when all was dark, it would be a meeting-place for gangs and drug-dealers as well as ghosts.  But now she was alone, and the crisp wind was whipping her hair about her face and blowing her eyes dry, and she reveled in it, whispering into the air half-formed rhymes that might have come from those who once lived there.

And then without warning, out of the cold afternoon came a noise like thunder in the midst of a hurricane—a great wind that shivered the rotten stone foundations, that made Amber's coat flap and almost sent her notebook spinning wildly from her grasp.  It rumbled, and the earth /hummed/ til the walls vibrated beneath her—

And with a loud clang, like the closing of a great door, it stopped.  The wood fell silent, where it had only been passive before, and she was left catching her breath and staring in surprise at two figures standing opposite her, but not yet facing her, in the frame of a door that had not led anywhere for nearly a century.

The hand not clutching her notebook already fumbled in her pocket for her knife, but it was more habit than intent.  It was plain that these intruders upon her peace were not troublemakers or fellow class-cutters.  It was also plain that should they mean her ill, her best and in fact only bet would be to run as fast as possible back toward civilisation.  The nearest was short and broad, his long, coarse dark hair braided beneath a metal helm.  He was in ringed mail, and gripping an axe nearly as tall as himself as he took stock of his surroundings.  The other was taller, slender, with pointed ears and golden hair--/tense/, like a great cat coiled to spring.  A bow was in one hand, an arrow in the other, its fellows kept in a quiver slung over his back.

Amber had never seen them, but she would have known them anywhere.  They had been friends of her heart since childhood when she first opened their book, though there was no way for them to even know who she was.

"I do not know where we are," she heard the taller say—low, musical, worried.  "But there is something dark and cold in the very air around us."

"Plain enough we're nowhere near the mountain where we should be!"  the other replied gruffly.  "So be getting us back to the others, elf, we haven't time!"

"Through the door," the first said, almost interrupting.  Amber watched the last glow of sunset fade from sight as he turned quickly and darted through the empty doorway through which they had appeared—

But he passed only under an arch of stone, and not through whatever portal had opened to bring them.

"What, it doesn't go the other way?" the dwarf growled, shaking his fist at the air as if he were pounding on an invisible door.  "I tell you there were no such gates in Khazad-dûm when my people were building there!"

"Sunset," the elf said after a moment.  "And probably sunrise as well."

The dwarf squinted up at the sky, appraising.  "What, we're just to sit here til the bloody sun comes back up again?"  He sighed, then, defeated, and leaned back against the tottering pillar.  "No, I know perfectly well that's how it works.  But I don't like the idea.  And I don't like the idea of a door being where no door ought to be, leading to—to wherever this is!"

"And I," his companion replied, still sounding troubled, "dislike the idea of waiting here all night.  It feels fell and evil, even to me."

"You don't want to stay here all night," Amber heard herself say.  They both turned abruptly toward her, weapons drawn.  She held up her hands to show she meant no harm—not that she could really have done them any, but they had no way to know that.  "It's not exactly a happy place.  And the people that show up here a few hours after dark...."  She shrugged.  "I'm sure you could kill them if you had to, but we kind of frown on killing people around here.  You'd do better just to not be here, and come back for the sunrise."

There was a long pause, during which the impenetrable silence of the forest rang in all their ears.  It was the dwarf who at last broke it.

"All right," he demanded with a growl.  "Who are you, and where are we?"

Her lips tightened to a flat line.  "For the first, I'm Amber, and for the second, you're in the woods, about a quarter mile from Discovery Lake, and a little further than that from Hanover College."

He was still glaring at her, but now his gaze travelled around the ruins almost sadly.  "And this is all that's left of our great mine?"  His voice was low, forlorn.

"Perhaps you should have asked /when/ are we," the elf offered softly.

"It's not a mine," Amber told him.  "It never was.  It was a—well, it was a horrible place, where horrible things were done to people who couldn't defend themselves.  But it was built by men, and destroyed by them as well."  A shrug, almost careless.  "A hundred and fifty years it's been here, but not much more than that."

For a moment longer they all stood there, facing off—two warriors atop a pillar, standing in a doorway that led nowhere, and a slender girl in black on a staircase opposite.  It was the tall elf, at last, who lowered his bow and inclined his head.

"As much as I do not like this place," he said, "I do not think you mean us ill."

"I don't," Amber answered.  "And even if I did, you have me both outclassed and outnumbered." She tilted her head, watching for a moment, and at last reached for her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.  "Well, I suppose I ought to invite you home and make you something to eat.  We don't want to be here too much longer anyway.  I can get you back by sunrise."  She dropped to the ground and began to walk, and only once she had passed the outer ring of the ruins did she turn back to see if they had followed her.  "Well, come on."

The elf sprang lightly to the ground, and with a great huff of air the dwarf followed him.  "I am Legolas of Mirkwood," the first said as he landed, "and this is Gimli, son of Gloin, of the Lonely Mountain."

"I know," she said.  It slipped out before she meant it to.  They peered at her quizzically.  "It is a pleasure to meet you," she said, and started back up the path. 

They had decided to accept her hospitality after all, it seemed.  She wondered if she should feel more strange about the entire scene, but only idly, the way one does when caught in a dream.  Perhaps it was the woods.  Within their boundaries, anything seemed not only possible, but likely.

It was only once out of them, and into the car park of the college, that the anachronism began to tug at her.  Even then it was not too strong—no different, perhaps, than the shift of perception upon leaving one of the renaissance faires she spent so much time at.  But it was there, nonetheless, and she found herself impatient to leave the place behind and get home.

They did not like her car.  They did not question it, much, for they were more accustomed than she to strange happenings and the unfamiliar customs and machinery of strange folk.  Gimli at least seemed interested in the mechanics of it, and she made an attempt to explain its workings to him without having to cover centuries of industrial development; Legolas was plainly uncomfortable in it, and sat pensive and quiet for the duration of the drive.

So it was a relief for all of them when they reached Amber's home; a small flat at the end of an almost entirely unoccupied row of them, with a bit of a yard and a tree in the front of it.  She let them in, tossed her bag in the corner of the living room and sat on the floor to take off her shoes.  "Come in...make yourselves at home.  I'll show you around in a minute, not that there's much to show.  Are you hungry?  I can get started on some supper now if you like."

That was agreed upon readily, and Amber began making a mess of her kitchen while Legolas and Gimli investigated her home.  They looked at her pictures and knickknacks and books, at lamps and stereo and Spike, her houseplant,  and a little at her laptop computer, though once she noticed that, she requested politely that they leave it alone.  The three of them settled down, then, to tea and wine and bread and some other things Amber dug out of her cupboards.  

For most of the beginning of the meal they discussed the magic portal; where it came from, where it led, and how it had come into being.  The first they could guess, the second was obvious enough, but none of them had any idea as to the last.  "Wizard-work," Gimli growled finally, his eyes hard.  "Or the hand of that devil-beast."

"I have never heard," said Amber, "that a balrog could make portals.  At least I hope that's the case, or I should worry about seeing more than just you two come through at dawn and dusk."

"That beast won't be a problem for you," Gimli said, his voice touched by very real sadness.  "Not anymore."

Amber nodded, slow and sad.  "I know."

Legolas glanced up at her, his gaze curious and a little hard.  "You seem to know a good deal about us," he said pointedly.  "Are you a seer, then?"

A wry twist of a smile.  "Not hardly.  I'm a literature student, and my parents run a horse farm."

"Then how is it you know our names," he pressed, "or about our encounter with the balrog?"

"Because," she answered wistfully, "I've read your book."

A long silence descended on them.  It stretched out, awkward and uncomfortable, until Amber rose to clear the table.  

"So it's not a gate through places," Legolas mused softly, "but through time."

"Perhaps," said Amber.  "Or through worlds, connected through stories.  This is all as new to me as it is to you, after all.  I know you, but I know you as characters, only."  The smile she turned over her shoulder at him was warm, though, almost laughing.  "It is good, I think, that you don't know me the way I know you.  You—both of you, and your companions as well—were childhood heroes to me, and imaginary versions of you took me on a good many adventures involving stick-swords and treehouses.  I am afraid you would think very little of me indeed."

Gimli laughed loudly, his dark eyes glittering at the heartening image of children recreating their quest.  "That," he told her, "is the best thing I have heard in too long."

She finished clearing the dishes away and took her computer into the middle of the floor, where she curled up with it.  "Best see what time sunrise actually is, so I can get you there early enough," she explained.  After the first few halting replies to their questions on how this new marvel worked, they gave up asking, and she gave up trying to explain.  It was a computer.  It was, as far as the travellers were concerned, pure magic.

As a general rule, Amber was never up before dawn.  If she could help it, she wouldn't be up before noon.  But exceptions could be made for special occasions, and she found it didn't bother her that she would have to be back at the ruins a little after six o'clock in the morning.  She told them how long it would be, and they both nodded.  The entire night was too long a wait for them, really; they were in a hurry—understandably—to get back to their own world and their most likely very worried companions.  

Amber showed them to her guest room, apologising that it wasn't much, and there was not very much room.

"I assure you it's better than where we've been sleeping," Legolas said mildly.

Amber leaned against the doorframe, only watching them for a few long moments, memorising them, wanting the image of her strange but so-familiar guests to be forever burnt into her memory, that she might never wake up and think it was only a dream.

"I wish I could go with you," she whispered, to herself only.

But it is easy for humans not to take into account the keen ears of elves and dwarves.  Legolas glanced at her in surprise; Gimli tactfully pretended he had not heard.

Until his companion suggested, softly, his tone suggesting disbelief at his own words, "Then why don't you?"

Amber's heart leapt into her throat.  Gimli turned to Legolas, startled.  "Elf!  Have you lost all sense?"

"Not at all, Master Dwarf," he replied.  "But I say the lady, however she came by the knowledge, is still a seer to us.  And it would bring our company back up to nine."

Gimli considered this, a low growl rumbling in his throat that tended to accompany him into deep thought.  "I see, I see...can you fight?" he asked bluntly, his gaze fixing on Amber again.

"Yes."  It was a truth, but perhaps not a complete one.  Amber had, to her credit, a small number of years learning kenpo, an even smaller amount playing with swords and throwing daggers at renaissance faires, and one college archery class.  What could be a significant force in deterring muggers in back alleys was unlikely to be quite so effective against armoured enemies with experience themselves.  She thought better of her claim, and amended it.  "Yes, but not very well.  I am not so good with a sword or bow as I would like.  But," she continued, "if, when there is time, you will help me to improve them, then I will gladly pledge them to you."

Gimli let out a gruff chuckle, and Legolas a lighter one.

"Well said!" he laughed.  "Though remember those fair words later, when you are cold and hungry and tired, and lying on hard rocks where you would rather have a bed.  But now you should get together whatever you need to bring with you, and prepare to leave."

"And I," said Gimli, "will use the opportunity to sleep where there are /not/ hard rocks poking at me.  Goodnight!"  he said meaningfully, and Amber nodded to them both and slipped out the door.

She had, through the course of a fantasy-filled childhood, given a good deal of thought to what she might need if she were suddenly summoned on a wild, magical adventure.  Now that it came to it, though, she found the job of packing harder than anticipated.  Warm things, to be certain, for they would come out still in the mountains; some of her camping gear would do well enough, but she was well aware that anything she brought with her, she would have to carry.  Anything unnecessary would become very heavy before it ever became useful.

In the end, it was only a matter of determining what she absolutely could not live without, and she had to laugh at the result.  Warm clothes could be piled on in layers, and her favourite boots would be the most practical anyway.  Her sketchbook and pencils, and a bag full of ground coffee, because even if she couldn't brew it, she was very well going to eat it anyway; the idea of marching through mountains and forests for days on end without caffeine was far more horrific than that of eating raw coffee beans.  Two full water bottles, a book of matches and a lighter, her sleeping bag with her father's old Army poncho liner folded inside.  She sharpened a pair of daggers and her sword; its well-notched blade was sadly in need of it.  It was really only for costume, not battle, and she didn't anticipate the flimsy steel lasting too long.  But it would be better to have it with her than not, until it did break.  

One more decision, then.  She had one more weapon, though once she'd learned how to use it, she had put it away and left it there.  She owned it only because her parents had suggested that a gun was a necessity for a woman who lived alone and off the main streets.  

It seemed blasphemy, somehow, to take it with her now.  On the other hand, it was the only thing that might really give her an edge if her life was seriously in danger.

Practicality won.  She wrapped the piece carefully in a rag, unloaded, and tucked it into her pack with what ammunition she had.  She wouldn't take it out unless it were necessary, but it would be there.  That would be enough.

Only two more things; good luck charms only, the sort of token that wouldn't be useful so much as comforting.

She spent a little more time cleaning up, making sure the place was in a state to be left, so that whenever she came back, she wouldn't be up to her neck in mold and flies.  She watered Spike and put away the dishes, and unplugged all the little appliances that she wouldn't have use of in the morning.

She was still not sure, when she curled up in bed at last, that any of it was real.  

She realised it didn't really matter.

****

The alarm began screeching far too early.  There was a moment, when Amber flailed toward her bedside table to hit it off, that she rather wished the entire experience /had/ been a dream.  Then she could finish it simply by going back to sleep.

But it wasn't, and somewhere in her heart she knew it wasn't.  She rolled out of bed and pulled on her robe, and turned on the coffee maker, and banged once on the guest-room door.  A pair of voices that sounded a good deal more conscious than her own assured her they would be out soon, and she stumbled back into her room to get dressed.

It was not much later, when they had finished off a box of breakfast bars and Amber was draining her coffee as fast as she could, that the three of them were ready to leave.  The sky was smokey crimson with false dawn, the wind chasing them through the trees as they abandoned the car and started through the woods toward the ruins.

They looked even more imposing by the blood-light of the early morning sky, foreboding silhouettes of dark, crumbling stone.  The travellers crossed the outer ring and the rowan tree that guarded it, and made for the pillar and its empty doorway.

"If you want to change your mind," Legolas told Amber, "this will be your last chance to do so."

"I know," she said, shifting her pack on her shoulders.  "But I'd regret it forever if I didn't go."

The first rays of the sun broke across the horizon and spilled through the trees, bathing the doorway in pale white-gold.

They stepped through.

tbc.

****

I know I thought of some chapter notes while writing this, but I don't remember them now.  Other than that I have a houseplant named Spike.  *grin*  Oh, wait, I do remember one.  You probably want to know if I'm intending to follow the movie, or the books.  Well, some of both, and some of neither.  I have no intention of re-writing 1000+ pages of Tolkien just to include another character, that's for damn sure.  Also, it doesn't make much sense to have another character if the story just keeps on going as if she weren't there at all.  But—well, look, just hang out and watch and you'll see, okay?  It'll work out.  It always does.

And thanks for reading!

Ash


End file.
